GOAL; Tougher Than World Cup? Draw Is Set for Euro 2012

By JACK BELL

Published: December 3, 2011

In many quarters, the European Championship is the soccer tournament, ahead of the World Cup, because there is no fluff, no Saudi Arabia, no United States, no Paraguay, no North Korea, no Honduras, no New Zealand, but also no Brazil and Argentina.

''Tougher than the World Cup,'' England Coach Fabio Capello told The Associated Press before the draw. ''The teams that finished first, second and third in the World Cup came from Europe.''

Friday in Kiev, UEFA staged the draw for next summer's 16-team tournament, which will be played in Ukraine and Poland and follows the co-hosting scheme used four years ago in Austria and Switzerland. This will be the first major international tournament to be played in the former Soviet bloc, with the 2018 World Cup to follow in Russia. The defending European and world champion, Spain, will try to become the first nation to repeat as continental champion (Spain won the second Euro in 1964).

The 16 teams were drawn into four groups of four teams each (Groups A to D). Four seeding pots were created, with the host nations Poland and Ukraine being top seeds. Poland was automatically placed in Group A as A1, Ukraine in Group D as D1.

The reigning champion, Spain, were placed in Pot 1 with the Netherlands, the team with the highest national team coefficient, as established at the conclusion of the playoff matches. Poland and Ukraine were assigned to Group A and Group D. All of the tournament games will be carried live in the United States on ESPN networks.

Footnote: For the tournament, Adidas has introduced a new ball, which harkens back to the company's classic Tango River Plate, which was introduced for the 1978 World Cup in Argentina.

The qualifiers were divided in the remaining three pots, according to their ratings:

The names of each qualifier were placed in a replica of the tournament match ball and drawn by the former stars Marco van Basten (the Netherlands), Peter Schmeichel (Denmark), Horst Hrubesch (Germany) and Zinedine Zidane (France). Here are the results of the draw: